The invention relates to headphones comprising left and right support members for a sound transducer.
Headphones are known in supra-aural or circum-aural design wherein the sound transducer is positioned in a baffle defining the supporting element of the sound transducer, said baffle being located inside left and right, semi-open or closed ear cups that are attached to the ends of a headphone strap and intended to abut the skull of a headphone user via headphone cushions either on his ear (supra-aural), or in an ear enveloping manner (circum-aural). Typically, each baffle carries a single sound transducer at its center, so that sound radiated by it is emitted in the direction substantially normal to the baffle. A disadvantage of this classical central arrangement of the sound transducer is that it promotes the in-head localization of acoustic or sound events produced by the headphones. Surprisingly effective as measure against the in-head localization has been found to not dispose the sound transducer in the center of the baffle but to dispose it offset out of said center downwardly and predominantly forward in viewing direction of a user. Headphones of this kind are disclosed, for example, in the WO/1991/001616. Even with these headphones sound is emitted in the direction substantially normal to the baffle but not directly into the ear canal. Rather, sound strikes the contoured outer ear of the user of the headphones and is reflected from there into the ear canal, recreating a major percentage of the information needed for the out-of-head localization of the “normal” listening situation in the surrounding space without headphones by means of sound generated through headphones for the user thereof. Depending on the individual shape of the outer ear and the auditory experience of a headphones user the irritating in-head localization in headphones use is overcome in this way. A similar effect is attained with headphones, the shells of which mounted on a headband and hence the baffles of the headphones are forwardly offset and tilted around a vertical axis angled towards the ear canal mounted on the headband (AKG 1000).
A disadvantage of these known headphones with reduced in-head localization is to be seen in the loss of treble and midrange information due to the fact that the sound is predominantly injected into the ear canal only after reflection on the skull of the headphones user and on his external ear structure, which loss of information turns out to more or less individually depend on the shape of the head and ears of the headphones user in practice resulting in selecting the sound level much too high thereby excessively burdening the ear.